Free Napoleon III and the French Second Empire by Roger D. Price

influential roles, at local level informal liberal leadership frequently appears to have been undergoing renewal. This was due to the withdrawal from public life of those who had been disillusioned by the
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    experience of the Second Republic, to the rallying of many, especially former Orleanists, to the imperial regime and because of the emergence of younger men especially from those excluded from office by the system of official candidature –
    a new generation of ‘outs’. The liberal revival of the 1860s was being prepared.
    Initially, the lead was given by Legitimists. Their criticism was frequently tolerated by the regime because as obvious conservatives they were not a threat to social order. Typically, theirs was an elite ‘party’ based upon personal relationships and voluntary associations rather than specific forms of political organisation.
    Although instructed by the Comte de Chambord, the Legitimist pretender, to
    abstain from politics, they were often too determined to take full advantage of their influence in local and national elections to adopt this purist stance. This was true both of landed elites in the west and south and, in an industrial department like the Nord, of notables like the textile entrepreneur Kolb-Bernard, the Vicomte Anatole de Melun and the Comte de Caulaincourt who presided over the charitable work of the major Catholic lay organisation, the Société de Saint-Vincent de Paul . The activities of this Société throughout France caused growing concern to the administration. It brought together regularly members of the Legitimist elite and provided them with the means of exercising a wider influence over both fellow members and the recipients of charitable assistance. Moreover, many of these Legitimist sympathisers continued to hold important public offices, again ignoring Chambord’s instructions to resign because this would have affected their incomes, reduced them to a tedious idleness and resulted in a significant loss of influence. In practice, although they might in private pour scorn on the bad taste of the imperial court and might fail to attend receptions at the prefecture, they generally cooperated with the government, justifying this at least initially by their common concern with the defence of order. Increasingly, though, the basis of this opposition from the right – potential rather than real – was changing. In place of dynastic loyalty, greater emphasis was placed upon defence of the interests of religion and the values of a traditional, hierarchical, rural society, against the destructive and demoralising tendencies of modern urban-industrial civilisation. Until 1859, however, the Roman Catholic Church remained on good terms with the regime,
    limiting the Legitimists’ ability to use the clergy as a means of appealing for mass support. Only the Emperor’s military intervention in Italy and an outcome which was unfavourable to the interests of the Papacy and offensive to the ultramontane instincts of most of the clergy, revived the traditional clerico-legitimist alliance.
    Even then, the results in terms of popular support were to be disappointing. Most practising Catholics failed to appreciate the need to protect the Pope’s temporal 35
    power, partly because of the declining influence of the clergy, but mainly due to the competing attractions of the regime and, to a lesser degree, of an increasingly anti-clerical republican opposition.
    This Republican opposition remained weak throughout the 1850s and beyond.
    The process of politicisation undergone during the Second Republic had not lasted long enough in most regions to establish a permanent mass commitment to the republic. The intensification of repression, moreover, had led to the disappearance of republican newspapers and organisations. The context for political activity, so fundamentally altered in February 1848, once again had drastically changed. The general atmosphere, especially in areas in which